Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Mayim Bialik Has Depression. She Wants You To Know ‘There Are Answers.’

“I wish I could have told my younger self: something will work,” Mayim Bialik says in a strikingly forthright video for the Child Mind Institute.

May is Mental Health Awareness Month — and while an “awareness months” can be a cutesy panacea, in the case of mental health, awareness saves lives. Belief that psychological problems are signs of weakness or are embarrassing prevent people from seeking medical and psychological attention.

And as long as there is a stigma against therapy, psychiatric medication, and talking about mental health struggles, there will be more suffering and death.

So Mayim Bialik’s Thursday video, made for the #MyYoungerSelf campaign, in which celebrities de-stigmatize their mental wellness issues by addressing their young selves, is a life-saver.

With deep compassion, Bialik zeroes in on an often unspoken problem — even when sufferers do seek help, because psychiatry and psychology are relatively new and misunderstood fields, finding what Bialik calls “the right kind of help for you” can feel excruciating.

Bialik speaks about waiting “years” to find the right help for her depression. “I had this notion when I was younger,” she says, “That if something didn’t work once — or if a therapist didn’t work, or if a medication didn’t work, that nothing would ever work.” She cuts straight to the heart of the frustrating cycle patients of depression and other diagnoses face while seeking help.

But it’s so worth it. Bialik tells viewers: “Something will work. It’s just going to take more research, sometimes more referrals, and really figuring things out like your life depends on it.”

“Because for me,” she says, “It did.”

If you won’t take it from a school counselor or a government PSA, take it from Amy Farrah Fowler: Your mind and your existence are precious. Prioritizing your wellness in a world that wont can be unbelievably frustrating. But people like Mayim Bialik went first and paved the way so you could come next and blossom.

Jenny Singer is a writer for the Forward. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.